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An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue.

The NBA and the world of architecture have more in common than exceedingly tall celebrity players — testosterone and a penchant for the gaudy, for instance.

We’ve come to expect a certain over the top-ness from professional basketball, from the in-your-face logos, fluorescent shoes, deafening games and showboating, thunder-dunking players.

When it comes to architecture, we bow to the big and loud, too. Like the latest death-defying amusement park rides, it’s the architecture with record-breaking altitudes and expressive, look-at-me looks that so often get the headlines.

It takes guts to be understated, to be good without flaunting it.

That’s what we got from the Milwaukee Bucks and Northwestern Mutual in a back-to-back reveal of designs on Tuesday and Wednesday. Neither of the projects — a new, art-inspired basketball court and a glassy, 32-story lakefront tower — are mere shiny objects.

These projects will become part of Milwaukee's image worldwide, one a new floor that will be seen on TV screens in hundreds of countries, the other a skyline-altering tower.

Let’s start with Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s project, the largest office tower to be built in Milwaukee in 40 years, situated at one of the more dominant and skyline-defining sites in the city.

The $450 million project is the most significant architectural event to take place in Milwaukee in a generation, excepting Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum, so the designs have been highly anticipated since the insurance company announced its plans in December.

I confess, I was unimpressed when I first laid eyes on them Wednesday morning. The gently bowed southern elevation, which echoes the bend of the eastern end of Wisconsin Ave., was nice enough. But that elegant, abstract shape and the building’s bigness seemed to be its most distinguishing characteristics.

I wondered if “The Quiet Company” was being too reticent, dull even. Was something more inventive called for on such a prominent spot?

Then, as I started to look more deeply at what is a very complex project, I realized there are some exquisite and refined ideas here. The tower, for instance, transforms utterly from various perspectives. A gently stepped exterior surfaces from the calm and lucid roundedness of the southern side at close range, and that gives way to a trim, angular elevation that comes to a translucent point when viewed from the east.

Heights and surfaces vary and overlap in intricate ways from certain vantage points, too. In a single building and in a condensed way, we get the kind of play of modernism you’d expect in big cities where there’s an aesthetic exchange among abutting skyscrapers.

Pickard has kept a lot of open and airy space near the edges of the tower's interior, including open, loft-like spaces for collaboration among employees. This is especially true along the southern edge, where, from what I can tell, the curtain glass may look like a delicate shell set apart from the mass of the building.

At street level, things get really interesting. The three-story commons, as the insurance giant is calling it, will connect the new tower to the historic, neoclassical headquarters. From Wisconsin Ave., what looks like a string of boxy buildings will sit like a scrim behind an outdoor park.

One of the most provocative elements of Northwestern Mutual’s design is what happens to this commons on Mason St., where the structure occupies two strong blocks. Part of it envelops a stretch of Cass St. into a sheer box that appears to float above the street, an intriguing alternative to a sky bridge. The architect, Jon Pickard, of the New Haven, Conn.-based architectural firm Pickard Chilton, likened the 1.1 million-square-foot project to a small city, and this will be really felt here.

Even more gutsy and potentially controversial is the way this structure slips in front of the 1914 headquarters on Mason St., extending that historic structure’s atrium forward into a modernist cube. In general, I love a good wedding of old and new architecture, which is tricky and generally not attempted in Milwaukee. It’s unclear to me to what extent this particular marriage will work and how much of the august architectural predecessor will be obscured from view. I’d like to see more detailed designs.

So, no, the Northwestern Mutual project has no hair-raising qualities. Thrill-seeking architecture lovers may be disappointed by this, but, in truth, a risky, attention-nabbing design would never have suited a company that is, by definition, risk averse. And it wouldn’t have played well, particularly given its voluminous size, with Santiago Calatrava’s postmodern, winged museum and Eero Saarinen’s sobering War Memorial either.

The visual impact of this tower may turn out to be in its secondary effects, the refinements that sneak up on you. There is much more to say -- and learn -- about this complex design still. There will be time for that. These are some of my first impressions.

Now, for that floor.

Fittingly, the Bucks revealed their floor at the Milwaukee Art Museum Tuesday night.

The new floor is inspired by Pop artist Robert Indiana’s much-beloved 1977 floor, an attempt to invoke the heydey heyday-era team that who played on the beloved MECCA floor, where the team enjoyed nine straight years of playoff appearances.

The design reprises the giant M's that flanked the midcourt line of Indiana’s court, running flush from end line to end line, sideline to sideline. The original M's were subtle in Indiana’s glowing yellow, and will be even more so now. They’re defined in a deeper shade of hand-stained northern Wisconsin maple for a subtler effect.

Several people, including one of the Bucks I talked to, didn’t immediately see the M's after the curtain was pulled and the new design revealed at the unveiling. That’s how subtle the gesture is. This is in part because the NBA scrutinized the idea and was balking at the idea of a largely painted surface.

What I love about the design is the way the Bucks, with a sort of humility you don't expect from an NBA team, reined in so many of the team’s own visual elements to allow the Indiana homage to pop. This was especially noticeable in the logo at center court, which is stripped to the stark essentials. The eight-point, whitetail deer is, as Larry Sanders called it, is "fierce."

Gone is the bold triangle of red and the stylized “Bucks” lettering. And the color on the court is almost exclusively a deep hunter green.

I had to ask myself: Is this a watered down rip-off of what Robert Indiana created for Milwaukee, fashioned this time around by a team of corporate designers? Or, is it a fitting homage to the Pop artist known for his "LOVE" artwork and some truly great years of hoops?

It's pretty close to out of bounds, but I think the resolute, earnest and deferential treatment of the original counts for a lot.

The result is tough, modern and understated.

Still, it must be said that the best homage to the 1977 floor would have been to commission an original design by an artist. And, while I like the idea of having a small panel in the court’s apron occupied by a rotating roster of Milwaukee artists, the symbolism is hard to miss: Local art is stuck in the corner. Cue the Patrick Swayze line.

A proposal by Milwaukee artist Reginald Baylor was pitched to the Bucks by the Our Mecca group, the organization that is the caretaker of the original MECCA floor. They served as a consultant on the current floor project. While the Bucks loved Baylor's design, with his signature square basketballs placed inside the three-point line and the antlers of the buck at center court, the team's officials decided it'd be too radical to take to the NBA, which signs off on floor designs. Scrutiny is much higher now than it was in 1977, and the deadline for the new floor was looming, they say.

I have no doubt that this is true, and I think the compromise position is a pretty nice one.

There is no question in my mind that Baylor, the most obvious local heir to Indiana’s Pop sensibility and an artist who's been working with basketball-related iconography for years, would have been an obvious choice for a new floor had their been more time to work with him to achieve a design that would get by the NBA. (

So, why not give him or another artist the NBA's constraints and some time now for the next floor? One of the ingenious things Baylor came up with to satisfy the NBA's desire for wood grain was to create a background that was painted wood grain. As the idea of a new arena gets bandied about, why not get a conversation about the next floor started now?

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. Follow her on Twitter (@artcity) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/artcity). Email her at mschumacher@jorunalsentinel.com.

About Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists.

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